


A Friend in Need ...

by lorata



Series: We Must Be Killers: Tales from District 2 [31]
Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Bromance, Careers (Hunger Games), Careers Have Issues, District 2, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 18:33:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3260048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorata/pseuds/lorata
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She pushes the door open, expecting what, she has no idea — a muttation or a murdered socialite, maybe even the president himself, naked and draped with his ever-present rose petals and a bloody come-hither smile — but okay, points to the universe, because this was not on the top ten at all.</i>
</p>
<p>Brutus interrupts Lyme's date, demanding she help him with a problem. It's so much worse than she thought.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Friend in Need ...

**Author's Note:**

> From the prompt meme going on at my LJ.

Lyme is knee-deep in innuendo with What’s-His-Name Who-Cares, her conquest for tonight, when her phone buzzes in her pocket. Normally she wouldn’t go for it when talking with someone, but this is a pretty, dark-eyed boy with the sort of face that will be even prettier when he’s on his knees, and it’s always a good idea to make these ones feel like you’re not too invested yet. Desperate to please will look good on him, and so Lyme puts her finger across his lips to shush him and digs out her phone.

It’s not Claudius, just Brutus, which means she doesn’t have to put on a normal voice for the call and Brutus can deal. Lyme winks at Pretty Boy and drops her hand to his thigh. “Yeah?” she says.

“Oh, great, you’ve found someone already, that’s just wonderful,” Brutus says, and it’s amazing that he can tell from only one word. He really should stop calling her during prime prowling hours. Lyme lets out a throaty laugh that’s half to traumatize him and half for the benefit of Pretty Boy, who flushes. “Do him quick and get over here, now, my apartment. I need help.”

Lyme raises her eyebrows. “I don’t think that’s your call.”

“I don’t give a flying asshole whose call it is, just get here _now_. I’m not calling Odin.”

That makes Lyme sit up a little; she’s pretty sure Brutus and his entire mentor-Victor chain call each other every morning to share what they had for breakfast, though probably only Devon would follow it up with how it made him feel. If Brutus can’t tell his mentor then this is serious. “What happened?”

Brutus’ breath hisses in her ear. “Not over the phone,” he says, which means _not where people are listening_. All the Victors’ phones are bugged, and while the odds of someone listening in at that particular moment are slim, sometimes it’s not worth the risk. “Not with you doing your best to fuck me in the ear, for fuck’s sake.”

There’s a squawk in the background, a strange howling that Lyme has never heard before but that runs fingernails down her spine. “The fuck was that?” she asks, dropping the voice, and Pretty Boy sits back in alarm.

“ _Just get over here_!”

Brutus clicks off, and Lyme stares at her phone in incomprehension.

“Is everything okay?” Pretty Boy asks, eyes wide. “If you need to reschedule —“

He really is a good one, all the right manners and none of the pretension, and Lyme bites back a groan. “Yeah, I’ve got to run,” she says, and this better be worth it or Brutus is getting his workout shoes shoved down his throat. She grabs the front of Pretty Boy’s shirt and pulls him in for a hard kiss, biting his lip on the way out before shoving him back with a hand to the chest. “Be a good boy, don’t take it personal, and maybe I’ll call you for a rain check.”

She tosses a crumpled bill in the jar on the counter while the coat-check girl grabs her jacket, pulls the coat on over her shoulders and heads out into the street for Brutus’ Capitol apartment.

They’d both come down to work for the weekend, but this was supposed to be Lyme’s one night off to have some fun. Pretty Boy wasn’t an assistant Gamemaker or a sponsor’s son, just a good-looking mid-twenty-something with a penchant for scary Victors who would tie him down and tell him what to do. It would’ve been a good evening, but as much as Lyme will never admit it to Brutus, boys like that come by the handful but a friend in trouble is something different.

Brutus hauls her inside before she barely has her shoulders through the door. “Close it, fast,” he says, eyes wide, and Lyme shuts the door and kicks off her shoes, hands twitching and readying fists just in case.

“What’s going on?” Lyme demands. His apartment seems all right, nothing broken or out of place, but the door to the bedroom sits only slightly ajar. “Uh.” She gives him a wide-eyed look. “If you’ve got someone in there who wants a threesome, I don’t care how much she’s offering —“

“For _fuck’s sake_!” Brutus explodes, and okay, no, that’s not it, then. “No, what the fuck is wrong — you know what, never mind, just go in there.” Lyme stars to protest but Brutus cuts her off with a slashing gesture. “Just — go look!”

Lyme does, but not before she draws a knife from her ankle sheath because fuck this mystery shit. She pushes the door open, expecting what, she has no idea — a muttation or a murdered socialite, maybe even the president himself, naked and draped with his ever-present rose petals and a bloody come-hither smile — but okay, points to the universe, because this was not on the top ten at all.

“Daddy?” says the blonde, curly-haired little pink thing sitting on the bed and ripping tissues into tiny pieces.

Lyme actually screams.

“Not Daddy,” the girl says with a pout, then turns back to her chore.

Lyme slams the door. “What — the fuck — was that?” she chokes out.

Brutus flings up both hands. “I don’t know! She was just — she was _here_ when I got here! In a fucking cradle! I don’t even want to know it got past security but I brought it inside before a Games-damned tabloid saw it. Fuck fuck fucking fuck —“

“Brutus,” Lyme says slowly. “Did one of your crazy cougars poke a hole in a condom?”

“You don’t think I haven’t thought of that?” Brutus snaps, face a high purple. “I get injections twice a year, they’re supposed to stop this from happening, do you know how much Victor Affairs pays for those? So how —“

“Stop,” Lyme says, commanding, and Brutus slaps himself in the face and drags both hands down. “Stop, if it’s not you then it’s not possible, right? Unless —“

Brutus’ face starts to drain of colour. “Unless what?”

“Maybe one of them kept a souvenir,” Lyme says slowly. “And — I mean, do you check the trash after they leave?”

“Sweet Snow on a summer’s day,” Brutus says, and he sits down so hard he misses the chair entirely and crashes to the floor. He doesn’t bother to get up, just stares blankly at the far wall like an outlier after making their first kill. “You don’t think —“

Lyme keeps an eye on the door just in case the thing inside has learned how to open them. When do they start being able to perform complex tasks? “If someone was going to clone a Victor from their fingernail clippings, pretty sure someone would’ve started with Odair,” she says. “This is probably just a crazy stalker who wants to trick her way into the tabloids.”

“So go to the tabloids,” Brutus says flatly. “Don’t come here and put a Games-damned baby on my doorstep! Who does that as the first step?”

“Crazy people?” She ignores Brutus’ snort. “It’s okay, we just have to get it out of here. Put it out by the road, maybe, someone will take care of it. People hate seeing sad abandoned babies, right?”

Brutus glares at her. “I am not putting a baby out by the road. She’s not my kid and I ain’t keeping her, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be dumping her on the sidewalk, come on!”

Lyme crosses her arms. She could be getting fantastic head in an alley right now and look where she is; he could at least pretend to appreciate her sacrifice. “Do you want my help or not?”

Brutus stares her down for a long moment, but then his expression cracks. “Yes,” he says. “I want your help, damn it, get this kid out of my apartment but in a way that will let me keep my soul.”

Kill nearly thirty people between them, no problem, but suggest leaving a baby out for someone else to take care of and suddenly that makes her a monster. Whatever. “I’ve got an idea,” Lyme says. She jogs into the kitchen, comes out a minute later with her hands stuffed into oven mitts. “I don’t want it to bite me!” she explains testily when Brutus gapes at her. “Plus those things drool, and this shirt was expensive.”

Brutus follows her as she pushes open the door again. The thing has managed to slide off the bed and toddle over to Brutus’ dresser, tugging out the bottom drawer and yanking all his jeans out. Lovely. “What are you going to do?”

“We’re going to take it to a DNA clinic,” Lyme says grimly. “Get it on paper that you’re not the father in case the psycho mom comes knocking, and then we’re going to raise hell with the security staff until they show us the footage and find out who did this.”

“Daddy!” burbles little miss curls, thankfully ignoring Lyme and making a beeline for Brutus. The kid smacks straight into his legs and holds herself up with her fists in his pant legs. “Daddy, up!”

“Why does she keep saying that?” Brutus asks, looking at Lyme wide-eyed. This man took out a pack of mutts single-handed, but Lyme doesn’t blame him one bit. “Why is she calling me Daddy?”

“She probably calls every big guy she sees Daddy,” Lyme says. The little larva pats Brutus’ leg, leaning its head against his calf and leaving a giant wet spot from its mouth. Lyme takes off the oven mitts and hands them to Brutus. “You’d better take it.”

“I’m not leaving with her!” Brutus protests, but after the fiftieth ‘Daddy, up!’ he finally bends down, picks up the kid with both hands under it armpits and holds it at arms’ length. “If anyone sees me with a baby, that’s it, it’s over. I’ll never get a sponsor deal again as long as I live.”

Lyme skewers him with a glare. “I am not walking into a clinic with an armful of baggies filled with your bodily fluids,” she snaps. “Put a damn hat over your eyes and let’s go.”

Half an hour later they’re in a waiting room, Brutus with his cap pulled down to his nose and his arms crossed over his chest, Lyme absently flipping through a magazine without registering a single word. The pretty piece of fluff at the country tried to tell her it was a two-day wait to check the samples, but after Lyme pulled out the killer combination of her best glare and Victor’s stipend card, they changed their tune to one hour.

The kid, meanwhile, has rolled under Brutus’ seat and is lying on its stomach, playing with his shoelaces. Brutus has given up trying to shake her off and sits in a slump, one hand over his face beneath the brim of his hat. “This is a fucking nightmare,” he mutters. He blows out his breath in a gusty sigh, then glances at Lyme between his fingers. “Thanks for coming,” he says, and oh no, Lyme is not having enforced celibacy and a baby and _feelings_ tonight, no thank you very much. “I know you were supposed to be —“

“Coming?” Lyme says, just to watch his face scrunch up in distaste. She rolls her eyes and stares at the wall across from her, a giant floor-to-ceiling water sculpture with tinkling streams that’s probably meant to calm frantic would-be not-fathers. “It’s fine, who else were you going to call?” She grins. “I guess you could’ve asked Nero. He actually likes babies.”

“Sure, yeah, and he would’ve had me making cat furniture for Calli until the Quarter Quell.” Brutus snorts. “Anyway, I appreciate it.”

“You’re not getting out of this without payback, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Lyme warns. “You’d better start looking up all the best booze places in the Capitol, and stat.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Brutus says, then grunts and leans down to pick up the kid, plopping it on his lap. “She keeps trying to eat my shoelaces,” he grumbles. “The last thing I need is for her to choke to death at my feet.”

Finally the girl comes over with a sheet of paper, which she hands to Lyme seeing as Brutus’ hands are full. Lyme turns it toward Brutus, who takes one look at the lists of numbers and acronyms and loses another shade of colour. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you are excluded from paternity,” says the girl in her chirpy voice. “I assume you would like a copy for your records?”

Brutus hisses through his teeth. “Something like that,” he says. “Okay, let’s get out of here.”

Lyme folds the paper and shoves it in her pocket. Brutus falls into step beside her as they head downstairs toward the back entrance, near a waiting line of taxis and away from the main street. The kid makes an alarming noise that Lyme finally identifies as a yawn, and Brutus sighs and hefts it up so its head falls onto his shoulder. Lyme watches in horrified fascination as it shoves half its fist in its mouth and falls into a doze.

“You know how I always wanted kids,” Brutus says once they’re in the cab. The lights of the city flash past, the orange glow of the street lamps looming close and illuminating the interior in a blinding flash before whipping past and casting them back into momentary darkness. “I keep thinking, fuck if this isn’t as close as I’m ever going to get.”

Lyme would be happy to never come near another baby again; she keeps forgetting that other people don’t feel the same way. Brutus might not want to be stuck with some lying psycho’s spawn, but he did want one of his own, before. It’s not something she understands, or wants to, but Brutus has told her enough on nights when they drink together and the conversation turns to contemplation instead of competition.

“Sorry,” Lyme says, because what else is there? If she’d been smart she would’ve bought a bottle of scotch and stuffed it in her jacket pocket before leaving the bar. Fuck this, babies and feelings and Brutus getting everything he wanted and can never have shoved in his face just because some woman decided to go full-on bug-nuts crazy. Fuck all of this.

“Eh.” Brutus shrugs. The kid squirms in its sleep, face puckering in a frown; Brutus shifts, rubs a hand over its back, and it settles back down.

“If you really want one that badly, I can always send your toenail clippings in to a lab,” Lyme says, and grins when Brutus shoots her a scowl.

“I hope the next boy you fuck shows up on your doorstep with roses every day for a month,” Brutus snarls, and Lyme snickers.

It doesn’t take much threatening to get the security staff to turn over their footage, and another hour of combing the video feeds and running it through the Capitol’s facial recognition software turns up a hit. Soon they’re looking at a grainy image of Fiona Marchmain, an up-and-coming Arena architect who was featured on Capitol Monthly, slipping past a camera in the lobby floor.

A hysterical laugh bubbles up inside Lyme’s throat, but she shoves it down. “Is she the one with the —“

“The life-sized cardboard standees?” Brutus finishes the sentence flatly. “Yeah, that’s her. She turned it around to watch us, said it was like having a threesome. I got the fuck out of there so fast I’m surprised there weren’t tire tracks on the floor.”

The only reason Lyme doesn’t give in to the screeching cackles is she doesn’t want to wake up the kid and set it to screaming. “So she had a baby and what, taught it to call her cardboard Brutus ‘Daddy’? Man, that is all kinds of fucked up.”

“You’re telling me.” Brutus shakes his head. “You go on home, I’ll wait for her here.”

“You don’t have to,” Lyme points out. “Just leave it with the desk staff, let them take care of it.”

“Nah.” Brutus looks down at the golden curls. “I gotta do this myself, I think.”

Lyme wouldn’t be a Victor if she didn’t recognize her cue. “Get some sleep after,” she tells him. “You look like shit.”

Brutus flips her a wry salute, and Lyme heads out.

Halfway down the block Lyme pulls out her phone, punches in the number she’d scribbled on the back of her hand hours ago. “Hey, pretty boy,” she says when he answers, half asleep but scrambling to attention. “You still up for that rain check?”


End file.
